How to Plan Jira Projects Smarter with a Planning Tool

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Planning projects in Jira may be a challenge - juggling tasks, managing team capacity, and keeping deadlines can easily get out of hand and lead to chaos. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In this article, you'll learn how to stay in control of your Jira project planning and make it far more efficient with the help of a visual planning tool like Team Planner - Resource Planning for Jira. Smarter planning doesn’t just reduce chaos. It significantly increases your chances of delivering on time. So, how can this be done?

Jira Project Planning: Visualizing the Big Picture

The big advantage of planning apps is that they display your plan on a timeline. Instead of a long list of randomly ordered tasks, you’ll see all your team members together with details of what they will be working on and when. Having a sort of calendar with all necessary information available in one, single place, at a glance, makes you less likely to forget or omit something. This significantly increases the chances of creating an efficient plan. 

Efficient Task Planning in Jira: Focus on Dependencies

In the vast majority of cases, the tasks included in your plan are interconnected. As their dependencies are shown on a timeline, you’re limiting the risk of overlooking any of them and planning work in the wrong order. You can also plan to tackle tasks with the highest priority first and make sure that there are no dependencies that would make it impossible. 

Assigning Work and Managing Team Capacity in Jira

Do you have the right specialists to do particular jobs? Are they available and capable of finishing everything on time? Do the rest have enough work to do? It’s much easier to answer these questions with planning software. It will help you avoid overworking people or not giving others enough tasks (which is also a risk as they can find some gigs and become unavailable when you’ll need them). In an app, you see users' current workload, the capacity and task allocation summary for each user on the plan, and their planned holidays - days off are marked on the timeline. All this facilitates proper work distribution and better resource planning.

Quickly Adjust Your Jira Plan When Things Change

Having a plan doesn’t mean that things will go 100% according to it. In fact, in most cases, they don’t. When something unexpected happens, what’s then important is to notice it and react quickly. You’re much more likely to do that when your plan is visually presented, with all details in one place. In case someone calls in sick or a task is taking longer than expected, you can asses faster how this situation will impact the whole project and what needs to be done to tackle it. Whenever a substitute or a new team member is brought in, seeing a plan on a timeline makes it easier and quicker for them to find out what’s going on and where the project is heading.  

With software, it’s also easier to track the progress of your project. As it’s connected with Jira, every team member sees immediately when the task’s status changes. This allows everyone to stay up-to-date, have insight into what’s happening, and anticipate possible threats.

Summary

Using a planning tool like Team Planner - Resource Planning for Jira can help you boost the likelihood of your project’s success. By visualizing your entire plan on a timeline, you get a clear view of the big picture along with detailed task breakdowns. It makes it easier not only to create the plan and allocate work properly but also to make changes swiftly if such a need arises. With smarter project planning and real-time updates, your team can avoid bottlenecks and deliver projects on time - every time.